As the demand for information and connectivity has grown, mobile computing devices have been increasingly deployed to provide convenient access to information. The term mobile computing devices, or mobile devices, as used herein, includes smart phones, cell phones, hand held computers and/or devices, personal digital assistants, mp3 players, portable media players, head mounted displays, and any other type of mobile user electronic device with a display area of some form.
The small size and light weight of mobile computing devices gives the user a sense of intimacy and control. However, these same advantages require that the screen size of mobile devices be small so that they can be hand held. This leads to cumbersome user input interfaces, since conventional interfaces, such as keyboards and mouse devices, usually hinder mobility.
Typically, users are limited to using touch screens or buttons as input interfaces to mobile devices. Such input interfaces are cumbersome requiring the use of both hands, one to hold the mobile device and the other to enter data.
Another difficulty with the small display screens of mobile devices is controlling the view and/or movement of representations of data and/or objects, also referred to as the virtual space. Indicating the desired movement in the virtual space may be cumbersome and slow using a stylus or touch screen. For example, indicating the desired motion in a three-dimensional virtual space may be awkward using two-dimensional interfaces such as stylus or touch screens. Moreover, controlling movement in a virtual space by using a stylus or touch screen may conflict with other modes of operation of the input interface. Heretofore, several unsuccessful attempts have been made to address these shortcomings.
U.S. Patent Application 2011/0096072 A1 discloses a three-dimensional (3D) space interface apparatus in which a user may directly touch and transform a 3D virtual object of a 3D space.
U.S. Patent Application 2009/0077463 A1 discloses a system configured to provide one or more virtual spaces that are accessible to users in which a markup language is implemented to communicate information between various components.
U.S. Patent Application 2010/0174421 A1 discloses a mobile user interface suitable for mobile computing devices which uses device position/orientation in real space to select a portion of content that is displayed.
None of these references, however, teach a method for providing a mobile user interface on a mobile computing device which includes sensing a movement in real space of the mobile computing, determining a change in position in real space of the mobile computing device based upon the sensed movement, determining a viewing perspective of a content treated as fixed in virtual space based upon the determined change in position of the mobile computing device, and generating a display of at least a portion of the content based upon the determined viewing perspective.